Orestes Fasting
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Modernizing Les MisIf you were going to translate Les Mis to a modern setting, how would you do it? Let's assume, for simplicity's sake, that we're talking about staging a modernized version of the musical, not rewriting the book or anything.
There are lots of ways to do it, of course--I once read a fascinating article that has since disappeared from the internet, about setting Les Mis in communist China, and the chilling parallels between the revolt of June 5 1832 in Paris and the revolt of June 4 1989 in TIananmen Square. But if it were up to me to pick just one, I'd start by looking at what the story's fundamentally about, why it needs to be told, and where the problems that the characters face might exist in the modern day. Poverty, obviously, but more than that: inescapable poverty, degradation, society's contempt for everyone caught in that toxic situation. And the host of complications that become both causes and effects: prostitution, child abuse, a broken prison system, crime, unrest, rioting and revolution.
So, looking at the modern world, or more specifically the modern United States because that's where I live, does such a toxic situation exist? Yeah, and you hardly even have to translate. Pick an inner city, any inner city, doesn't matter. You could set it in Chicago or LA or Detroit or Washington DC and it'd be the same old story, what's the use of tears. It's not even a stretch to portray some poor bastard locked up for twenty years on a minor drug charge, or a single mother falling into prostitution and dying of AIDS while her kid gets shuffled around the foster-care ghetto, to say nothing of poverty and gangs and riots. It's a perfect setting for a modern Les Mis�rables, and it's goddamn shameful that such a setting still exists.
I mean, I guess you could just dress up a bunch of white people in modern clothes and have them act out the show in a generic 21st century setting--but going back to 1862, what Hugo was writing about was real, it was painful, it was controversial, it touched nerves. And I think modern America has a giant raw nerve around the racial divide and urban poverty, and prodding mercilessly at that nerve is the best way to illustrate that the problems of Les Mis are not solved, they're still real and painful and controversial, and this is not just three hours of angsting about how poverty sucked in the 19th century. It's about a giant, festering, self-perpetuating social problem, one that those not affected don't really want to deal with, so they turn a blind eye or blame the people caught up in it for their own suffering. And it's a story that tells people what they don't want to hear: you and your society created this mess, and you have the power and responsibility to fix it.
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Vanessa20
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OTI don't really have any ideas about modernized staging, but I just wanted to respond because this post exactly reflects how I've been feeling for the past few weeks and especially today.
Not long ago I was listening to "Les Mis," as I so often have over the years, when suddenly there came the line in ATEOTD "And the righteous hurry past..." and suddenly the meaning of the line hit me so hard that I had to stop listening.
I don't know if it's because I've been stressed lately, or just because I'm getting older, or what, but "Les Mis" has been touching my raw nerves lately. I used to be able to distance myself from the whole thing: those people's lives weren't my life or the lives of anyone I knew. It used to be just a 19th century melodrama to me. But now I can't listen to it without feeling a metaphorical finger pointing at me and saying "This is how life is for millions of people, all this misery is out there, and you've been one of the righteous that hurry past your whole life." I'm not even always sure that Hugo's message of hope is really that relevant, since so little has changed worldwide.
I've been depressed lately. I need to go pet my dog.
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Moci
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When talking about a modern setting, are we talking about modern as in now- 2008? Or a modern age, such as the last 50 years. I was reading something ages ago which talked the opinion that why 'Les Mis' resonated so much was that it wasn't released at the moment where the bulk of it took place, but a few decades later, so that people could look back at it. People say that there is no period of history as distant as the recent past, but in truth there is none more far away from our comprehension as what is happening at this moment. If you set an adaptation of 'Les Mis' now, then I can't help but feel that it'd be dismissed as 'edgy', but people sadly wouldn't view it as being truthful, yet if it was set just a few years ago- a time not long enough to be viewed as history yet and that still resonates to people, but long enough to be viewed with some acceptance.
There'd be no problems with transporting the plot thematically since the poverty and degradation- the outcasts and the underdogs have always existed, but plot-wise it's the massacre of people which I can't see working quite so well in any modern setting. For that reason Tiananmen Square would be near perfect in that unfortunately it happened. It's a shame that the article you talk of doesn't appear to exist anymore as the parallels are fascinating and I'd love to read more by someone whose actually researched them. (Although can we please remove 'Turning' from the potential adaptation, because as much as it clashes with Hugo in the musical as it stands, it'd be even worse in this setting.)
Thinking about potential adaptations without looking at how all plot points would emerge and actually researching it, the anti-apartheid movement and student protests in South Africa in the 1960s could be interesting for transporting the themes of the novel and certain parts of the plot, or even with throwing away more plot, the 1984-5 Miner's Strikes in the United Kingdom, although I'm thinking of the top of my head here.
This is a brilliant topic though Orestes and I'd love to hear anyone else's thoughts on it. One of the things which seems to be most said about 'Les Mis' is the fact that it's universal and it's distressing to think how universal it still can be.
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Orestes Fasting
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| Moci wrote: | | I was reading something ages ago which talked the opinion that why 'Les Mis' resonated so much was that it wasn't released at the moment where the bulk of it took place, but a few decades later, so that people could look back at it. |
The way I look at it is that Hugo was writing about a time when the more controversial problems of his day had just taken shape: In the 1820s and 30s France was leaving behind the Revolution and the Empire and shifting into the bourgeois-dominated Industrial Revolution, and likewise the problems of industrial-era urban poverty and crime had just reared their ugly heads. Writing about the nearly-forgotten revolt of 1832 allowed him to 'shadow' the more-recent revolution of 1848 and the quickly-stifled insurrection that accompanied Louis-Napol�on's rise to power. But prison reform, education, prostitution, poverty, and crime were still thorny issues in 1862, they'd just developed farther and become more exacerbated than in 1832. Hugo was using the recent past to talk about the present.
When I started the topic I was thinking of Les Mis set in the modern age, not necessarily at this very second. Some ideas wouldn't need specific dates, but it would be interesting to see LM set during a specific event or uprising in recent history.
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Brunnhilde
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Yes, it could happen today. In any big city. What Orestes said is right, and I think a modern staging would be good - IF the director makes it normal and not some idiot avantgarde Regietheter. I have seen wonderful modern performances and also awful ones - not musicals, operas. But it's equal.
The other situation (also not today) I could see it is the time of the big economic crisis and in Chicago. Th�nardier and his gang are gangsters, Valjean is an Irish immigrant, Javert is a half-breed Indian, Fantine is a poor Italian immigrant. Those times were hard. It could work.
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Mistress
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I've been thinking Fascist Italy, pre WW2, or Spain during the civil preWW2 could work except that Javert would become more of a villian, being a Fascist cop and all...or it could take place in Ireland during major Indepence riots.
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lizavert
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| Quote: | | or it could take place in Ireland during major Independence riots. |
Oooh, I could see that! Like in 1916, during the Easter Uprising. That could work. Or perhaps during the Russian Revolution.
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Orestes Fasting
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Hm, I find it interesting so far that almost everyone has centered their choice of modern settings around a specific failed insurrection or movement for social change. Varying degrees of violence, varying degrees of societal upheaval going on at that particular point, but always centered around the revolt. When I thought about how to translate LM to a modern setting, I was thinking of identifying the places in modern societies where these wounds are still festering and where it's still somewhat taboo (or at least inflammatory) to preach a message like LM's. Festering social wounds obviously breed unrest, but I wasn't thinking in terms of specific revolutions. It would work equally well to leave the revolution unspecified and not based on a real-life event--how many of you knew or cared, when you first saw Les Mis, that there was a real revolt in June 1832?
Maybe my inner Enjolras fangirl has mellowed out with time, but I'd almost rather see a heavily-adapted Les Mis that tried to tackle a subject like the Paris banlieue, than one that was set during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising where nobody's going to have their ideas of villains and victims challenged.
I mean, I'd totally go see Warsaw Ghetto Les Mis. And it would probably hit all my emotional buttons and I'd leave the theater sobbing. But Les Mis adapted to fit a current, thorny, controversial situation has the potential to be so much more interesting.
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lizavert
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Ah, I see what you're saying. Stay true to Hugo's intent in writing the story in the first place, while taking a look at problems of the modern world.
In that case, how about New York in the '60s. Or a little closer to home, L.A. in the 90s. You could say a lot about race relations and poverty in both cases.
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Vice
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With the way that the American government seems to be turning to crap lately, I've been understanding it so much more lately. I'd love to see it done as a symbolistic, hypothetical event in America spawned by that "what if?" that has been and undercurrent in life here lately.
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The Very Angry Woman
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Re: Modernizing Les Mis | Orestes Fasting wrote: | | If you were going to translate Les Mis to a modern setting, how would you do it? Let's assume, for simplicity's sake, that we're talking about staging a modernized version of the musical, not rewriting the book or anything. |
Someone did that in the late '90s -- I believe it was a theatre company in Australia. I can't find their site now, but I think they kept it in France, but everything was at least somewhat present-day. There was beer on tap in the Th�nardiers' inn, and Valjean lifted a runaway car. Yes, car. I saw pictures at one point but don't remember much other than Eponine wore a flannel jacket and Valjean was in a wheelchair (possibly with an IV) during the finale.
The one friend I knew who had seen it seems to have dropped off the face of the earth. Boohoo.
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Monsieur D'Arque
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It sounds quite interesting, and I'm definitely torn between picturing modern!Thenardiers as Eurotrash to the extreme, and picturing them as Sopranos-like Jersey-ites.
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Vice
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| Monsieur D'Arque wrote: | | It sounds quite interesting, and I'm definitely torn between picturing modern!Thenardiers as Eurotrash to the extreme, and picturing them as Sopranos-like Jersey-ites. |
I suppose it would depend on the setting you alter it to.
(I'm rather fond of the Jersy ite idea though.)
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Monsieur D'Arque
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I think if it was set in America, a possible but significant idea would be to cast both Valjean and Javert as African-American. I think that it could say a lot about the racial diaspora that still exists in America, where racism and race-related crime are still prevalent, if the character representing morality beyond law and the character representing law beyond morality are both "suspected" minorities.
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Pounce
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Re: Modernizing Les Mis | Orestes Fasting wrote: | | I mean, I guess you could just dress up a bunch of white people in modern clothes and have them act out the show in a generic 21st century setting--but going back to 1862, what Hugo was writing about was real, it was painful, it was controversial, it touched nerves. And I think modern America has a giant raw nerve around the racial divide and urban poverty, and prodding mercilessly at that nerve is the best way to illustrate that the problems of Les Mis are not solved, they're still real and painful and controversial, and this is not just three hours of angsting about how poverty sucked in the 19th century. It's about a giant, festering, self-perpetuating social problem, one that those not affected don't really want to deal with, so they turn a blind eye or blame the people caught up in it for their own suffering. And it's a story that tells people what they don't want to hear: you and your society created this mess, and you have the power and responsibility to fix it. |
I really like your ideas etc but I really don't think this is what Les Miz is about. So many see it as a commentary on society etc but I think the story's meaning really centers around Jean Valjean and Javert and to the ideals they hold. And in a odd way, I wonder if the people involved with the show's creation including the writers know either.
I see the setting of Les Miz as more of a supporting backdrop to the larger issue. So while finding an actual modern historical event as the backdrop would be nice, I don't think it is important to Les Miz's real message.
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Orestes Fasting
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Are you talking about the story itself, or the musical's implementation of it? The book balances many themes at the same time, just like it juggles the characters and subplots, and social commentary is by far the most prominent theme. The musical lost a lot of it, but I think it's a crucial aspect of why this story needs to be told; IMO, part of the reason the commentary seems downplayed in the show is because it's difficult to be incisive and relevant when the plot deals with a period in history the audience doesn't know much about.
Reducing the story to the conflict between Javert and Jean Valjean would do it a grave disservice; it's meant to be an interplay between many different themes, plots, and characters. Relegating social commentary to the sidelines would weaken it just as much as making Javert a minor character.
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Monsieur D'Arque
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True, but nonetheless, applying a modern veneer won't change that all that much.
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Orestes Fasting
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What I'm saying is that putting the show in a modern setting would provide that relevance and incisiveness, and make all the social commentary that's inherent in the story finally hit home. As soon as you start going through the plot in a modern setting, the commentary speaks for itself. Audiences who might have been watching the show from the cushy remove of two centuries, crying in all the right places and feeling sorry for the victims of injustice, could start getting pretty uncomfortable when Valjean is the black guy with a criminal record that they'd avoid on the street.
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Monsieur D'Arque
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But that's the point, isn't it? Society rejects him because of it, despite the fact that he rises above it. It's the whole first act.
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Orestes Fasting
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Yeah, and the audience is supposed to realize that they are the society that rejects the Valjeans and Fantines of the world. That doesn't really happen when you can walk out of the theater going "Oh, I'm so glad I don't live in the 19th century, look how horrible they were for locking that guy up for 20 years for a piddling offense and never letting him back into society."
Are we talking about completely different things, or am I the only idiot who thinks it might be a good idea to look at why this story was written when thinking about how to stage it?
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Pounce
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| Orestes Fasting wrote: | | Are you talking about the story itself, or the musical's implementation of it? |
The musical.
| Quote: | The book balances many themes at the same time, just like it juggles the characters and subplots, and social commentary is by far the most prominent theme. The musical lost a lot of it, but I think it's a crucial aspect of why this story needs to be told; IMO, part of the reason the commentary seems downplayed in the show is because it's difficult to be incisive and relevant when the plot deals with a period in history the audience doesn't know much about.
Reducing the story to the conflict between Javert and Jean Valjean would do it a grave disservice; it's meant to be an interplay between many different themes, plots, and characters. Relegating social commentary to the sidelines would weaken it just as much as making Javert a minor character. |
The show has to condense it to fit it into a musical show format. I haven't read the book but I think the show is not so much Javert and Valjean's conflict but their core beliefs that I think matters most. Most of what is left in the show supports that. Basic human dignity might be another theme but I don't think the show's material supports it that well.
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Vice
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| Orestes Fasting wrote: | | Are we talking about completely different things, or am I the only idiot who thinks it might be a good idea to look at why this story was written when thinking about how to stage it? |
I think it's a great idea. You can draw so many parallels to it today, even though the story takes place 200-odd years ago.
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Orestes Fasting
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| Pounce wrote: | | The show has to condense it to fit it into a musical show format. I haven't read the book but I think the show is not so much Javert and Valjean's conflict but their core beliefs that I think matters most. Most of what is left in the show supports that. Basic human dignity might be another theme but I don't think the show's material supports it that well. |
I tend to think of the show as another way of telling the same story, not a work that can or should be divorced from Hugo's original themes. One of those themes is certainly the clash of value systems between Valjean and Javert, and with the way the show's always been put on, that one is the most prominent. But the other themes are still latent in the material, and the story--including the show, stripped-down as it is--supports interpretations that bring different elements to the forefront. If Valjean and Javert's core beliefs were the only material worth working with, at least two-thirds of the show would be extraneous.
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